


Blueberry

by caejones



Series: Reddie Modern AU [1]
Category: IT (2017), IT - Stephen King
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - No IT (King), Beverly Marsh & Richie Tozier Are Best Friends, Bisexual Richie Tozier, Fluff and Angst, Gay Eddie Kaspbrak, I promise, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, M/M, Minor Ben Hanscom/Beverly Marsh, Minor Bill Denbrough/Stanley Uris, Richie Tozier Loves Eddie Kaspbrak, Trans Beverly Marsh, Trans Richie Tozier, Transphobia, not actually about richie taking a bath for most of it, the losers are 17 in this
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-31
Updated: 2018-01-31
Packaged: 2019-03-12 01:38:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,540
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13536933
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/caejones/pseuds/caejones
Summary: He slips into the water, scalding hot and hidden by a thick layer of frothy white bubbles, and grimaces as the blueberry scented soap hits his nose. It’s sharp and unpleasantly feminine, the only option of body wash he has, having used the last of his usual brand a week before and spending all of his savings at the arcade with Bill the week before that. The blueberry concoction was a Christmas present from some grandparent or another who had clearly not taken the time to get to know him since he was six years old, and who had decided a novelty pencil shaped tube of glittering blue soap was a perfectly acceptable gift for a seventeen year old boy.Or, Richie Tozier takes a bath.





	Blueberry

**Author's Note:**

> Hullo this is like,,,, my second ever Proper Fic so don't hate me blease and lmk if there's any mistakes I don't have a beta lmao.  
> Anyway Richie and Beverly are trans bffs and I love them.  
> I wrote this whilst I was sick and the ending feels super rushed but enjoy I hope

He slips into the water, scalding hot and hidden by a thick layer of frothy white bubbles, and grimaces as the blueberry scented soap hits his nose. It’s sharp and unpleasantly feminine, the only option of body wash he has, having used the last of his usual brand a week before and spending all of his savings at the arcade with Bill the week before that. The blueberry concoction was a Christmas present from some grandparent or another who had clearly not taken the time to get to know him since he was six years old, and who had decided a novelty pencil shaped tube of glittering blue soap was a perfectly acceptable gift for a seventeen year old boy.

  
It’s a last resort, and an unfortunate one at that. Mike had pointed out earlier that day that the smiley faces Richie had drawn on his left arm at some point last week were still there, and Richie knew he couldn’t put off using the godforsaken soap any longer. He could put up with the strawberry scented shampoo his mother insisted on buying, but the body wash was an important piece of his identity. If he didn’t smell like an old man, who even was he? (Stan likes to point out how similar Richie sounds to those “ _hypermasculine no homo bro dudes_ ” when he talks like this, to which Richie almost always responds with an exaggerated gasp and insulted expression). Its not as though Richie actively avoids washing, it’s just in the midst of putting up with his parents and school at the same time, he just can’t be bothered to put up with the dysphoria looking at his own body brings.

  
Wincing suddenly as his hips ( _too wide too curvy too feminine_ ) hit the water, Richie is reminded of the reason he usually showers rather than bathes. Glittery blue water seeps into fresh cuts that litter the skin stretching from his thighs to his waist, and the boy finally takes the time to investigate the damage done the night before. He gently sponges over the cuts, counting as he goes. _Thirty-five? No, thirty-six_. Left side thirty six, right side forty. The sponge picks up the blood that had dried and congealed, leaving the skin pink and raw looking surrounding each cut and the pristine sponge slightly stained. Don’t get him wrong, Richie isn’t the type to wallow in his own emotions; it’s just that sometimes the urge to break something gets too much, and his only option is to self destruct. He always hates himself afterwards (and sometimes whilst he does it too, imagining Eddie scolding him, _‘you’ll give yourself some kind of infection if you keep using that old pencil sharpener, dumbass’_ ), but late at night when he needs to feel something real to ground him, it’s all he has.

  
Richie doesn’t linger on the cuts, only checking over them to make sure they’re healing fine, and instead focuses on running his fingers through his ( _too long toolong toolongtoolong_ ) hair, untangling the curls. When he had first cut his hair seven years ago, his parents had been livid. He'd come home with his once waist length curls chopped unevenly around his ears, having cut it himself with Eddie's safety scissors and Beverly’s handheld mirror at lunch that day. His mom had screamed and cried as though he had died rather than just trim some already dead cells from his scalp, and his father had remained silent until dinner, when he sent Richie to his room for an unexplained reason. Since then, has been getting Bev to do it for him every couple months, and his parents haven’t brought it up since – although neither of them really talk to him anymore anyway.

  
His hair thoroughly soaked and now laying flat around his shoulders ( _toolongtoolongtoolong_ ), Richie fumbles around the side of the bath, looking for the shampoo. Without his glasses it’s easy to confuse the bottles that lay around the tub, but eventually he finds the right one and begins massaging the bright pink liquid into his hair. Beverly has been living with her aunt since summer, having finally got out of her dad’s place. Bev's aunt is cool. Bev's aunt doesn’t judge. Bev's aunt calls both Richie and Beverly by their actual names, which is more than could be said for either of the two's parents. When Beverly came out to her dad five years earlier (despite being pretty open about being a girl before that anyway) he became even worse towards her. Richie doesn’t know what the redhead expected, to be honest; Mr Marsh has always been a rotten piece of shit. Still, he can't blame Bev for being hopeful that her parent might have accepted her for who she was – after all, hadn’t he done the exact same thing? As far as Richie's concerned, it doesn't matter anyway. The Losers are all the family he needs.

  
Beverly living so far away means that Richie’s haircuts are now few and far between, but he can’t hold it against the girl for moving. Going to visit her now is like going to visit a beloved family member at Christmas, except with more dumb jokes and less awkward explanations of what it means to be transgender. Every few months or so, when everyone has a free weekend within their timetables that have become more and more clogged over the years, the remainder of the Losers pool all of their cash together and catch a train to see their missing member. Sometimes there’s tears, but more often than not the group slip back into their old ways immediately; Bev and Ben being a couple now barely changes anything within the group, except for the looks the two of them get after any particularly obvious PDA. Richie’s happy for them, he really is – he just wishes he could man up and finally make a move on Eddie ( _who said that? I sure as hell didn't. I don’t like Ed’s like that, honestly what a cliche. Falling in love with the best friend? Really? What is this, a 2012 fan fiction? Grow up, Rich_ ).

  
Weekends spent with Beverly are what keep Richie going in days like this; rooting through thrift stores and looking for the worst clothes possible, pretending that they’re siblings despite looking nothing alike (But wishing desperately so that they were related, so they’d have had someone there for them through everything. _It doesn’t matter, Bev's as good as my sister anyway_ ), spending hours catching up with how the other has been. He remembers the first time the redhead had taken him on a thrift store trip, five years ago. The summer both he and Bev had come out to their parents, and decided to celebrate with new clothes (what they were celebrating, neither really knew – Richie hadn’t exactly received a welcoming response either). Richie had spent all of his savings on the most ridiculous shirts he could find, and spent his entire thirteenth summer practically living in them. He had other clothes sure, Beverly and some of the other Losers had donated old shirts and shorts and jeans and hoodies and trainers and coats and more, but what was the fun in that? In his mind, if people were going to stare at him, Richie wanted it to be because of his awful ( _wonderful, tacky, masculine_ ) clothes, not because of his feminine features. Beverly had spent little of her money that day, wisely saving up for a future in which she could spend all the money she wanted on pretty dresses and makeup, but had bought herself a single skirt ( _her first one, I helped her pick it out. Ben complimented the flowery pattern and Mike said it made her look lovely, and Bev didn’t stop blushing and smiling for an hour straight_ ) and a few bangles. They’d got some strange looks from the cashier, but the two teens had been too euphoric to even noticed the raised eyebrows.

  
Richie still dresses like someone’s embarrassing uncle at a family barbeque, and it’s almost become a tradition for the rest of the Losers to buy him the most hideous shirts they can for his birthday every year. As he rinses the shampoo out of his ( _TOOLONGTOOLONGTOOLONG_ ) hair, Richie looks over to where his clothes from that day lay crumpled in a pile. The t-shirt, dark blue and printed with a pattern clearly inspired by a bowling alley carpet, was a gift from Eddie the year before, after a comment from Richie when the Losers had gone to the local alley for the afternoon ( _“My god, Eddie-Spaghetti, have you ever seen something as gloriously beautiful as the carpet of a bowling alley arcade? Apart from your own face, of course”_ ). Eddie had told him to _“beep beep, fuckface”_ but he had also turned a rather lovely shade of pink, so Richie classed the interaction as a clear success. The dynamic between the two of them had never changed; Richie flirting terribly, pressing sloppy kisses against Eddie’s cheeks when the shorter boy least expects it, and Eddie effectively telling him to fuck off. But when his mom gets too much to handle, or when he knows Richie needs to get out of the house for a while, it’s guaranteed that Eddie will phone the other and ask him to come over. And if Richie always drops whatever he’s doing, and climbs the tree next to Eddies house no matter the weather to drop through his best friends window with all the grace of a drunken giraffe, what of it? So what if by morning the two are always buried under Eddies blankets, a tangled mess of limbs that most likely only received a few hours sleep after a night of hushed talking and laughter? That’s just how they were. ( _But wouldn’t it be nice if...?_ ) ( _The last thing either of is need is for this to ruin our friendship. Or for Sonia to find out. She'd send Ed’s to some kind of conversion therapy, and you know it._ )

  
Richie shakes his head to get rid of the lingering thoughts and begins to apply an unreasonable amount of conditioner to his head, making sure to cover every patch of ( ** _TOOLONGTOOLONGTOOLONGTOOLONG_** ) hair. He leaves it to soak in for a few minutes, scrubbing down the rest if his body with the rough side of his sponge in the mean time. The combination of scalding hot water and the harsh material of the sponge leaves his skin red raw, but Richie barely takes a notice in his desperation to feel clean ( _I shouldn’t be thinking about Eds like this he’s my best friend what the fuck he'd probably never like me that way anyway he doesn’t see me as a real boy none of them do they just pity me_ ). Sitting in the bath, lost in his own thoughts of self loathing , and having only gotten a few hours sleep the night before thanks to his parents screaming at each other, Richie closes his eyes for a moment of peace.  
-  
He wakes with a start, snorting lukewarm water up his nose as he momentarily forgets where he is. His fingers feel pruned to a new level, as though the pads of each digit have been replaced with raisins, and the conditioner in his hair feels uncomfortable and stiff. Blinking his eyes in an attempt to focus them despite the lack of glasses, Richie numbly acknowledges that his phone is ringing from it’s place on the bathroom shelf.

He grumbles to himself as he recognises Stan’s ringtone, and let’s the phone continue it’s screaming ( _why the fuck did I decide giving Stan that fucking Mulan song as a ringtone was a good idea_ ) and begins washing out the conditioner. The phone goes quiet for a moment, until he hears two messages from Eddie come through, and Richie decides he’s been sitting in the cold water for long enough.

  
The teen practically falls over the side of the bath ( _shit, there’s water everywhere. Shit, it’s going under the door. Shit shit shit mom’s new carpet she’s gonna kill me shit_ ) and throws a towel onto the floor, wrapping the other around his ( ** _TOOMOTHERFUCKINGLONG_** ) hair to stop it from dripping, and then finally looks at his phone.

  
_Four missed calls_

  
_Billiam – 7:46_

  
_Mikey Mouse – 7:53_

  
_Stan the Man – 8:00_

  
_Stan the Man – 8:05_

  
The group chat has _83_ messages that he's missed in his hour long bath, but Richie’s only concerned about his private messages, the group chat can fuck off.

  
_Billiam – 7:31_  
_We're all meeting at mine at 8 if ur in_

  
_Billiam – 7:34_  
_Movie night , if ur late u don’t get to vote on the film_

  
_Stan the Man – 7:43_  
_Hey Trashmouth are you coming over or what?_

  
_Eddie Spaghetti <3 – 7:55_  
_Hey loser what’s taking u so long_

  
_Eddie Spaghetti <3 – 7:57_  
_Chee r u okay_

  
_Eddie Spaghetti <3 – 8:03_  
_Movies starting, u sure u don’t wanna come?_

  
_Eddie Spaghetti <3 – 8:10_  
_Richie_

  
_Eddie Spaghetti <3 – 8:15_  
_:-(_

  
_Eddie Spaghetti <3 – 8:15_  
_we can just go to mine if you don’t wanna do movie night?? Idm ditching these losers_

  
Just as he finishes reading the last message from Eddie, his phone starts ringing again, this time blasting out Bohemian Rhapsody. He doesn’t even have to see the blurry screenshot of a Snapchat he'd been sent a few months back to know that the contact name is the same as the one on those wonderfully clingy messages, and he picks up almost immediately.

  
“Yellow?”

  
_“’Chee what’s up? Why aren’t you answering your phone?”_

  
“Well that’s the thing Eds, I am answering my phone. This thing we're doing right here? It’s called a phone call! Isn’t technology amazing?”

  
_“You know what I mean, asshole.”_

  
“Yikes, someone got up on the wrong side of the bed today. I was busy, okay? _”_

  
_“...”_

  
_“Richie did you fucking fall asleep in the bath again?”_

  
_Fuck._

  
“Me? Fall asleep in the bath tub? Never! I’m shocked that you think so little of me, babe. Now what’s this I hear about a movie night?”

  
_“Richie I swear to God you need to start paying attention, don’t you know how dangerous that is? It’s like you have a fucking death wish oh my God.”_

  
“Uh huh, sure. Anyway, movie night?”

  
_“We're like half an hour into Maleficent, it’s kinda shit. You don’t have to come if you don’t want to ‘Chee.”_

  
A Disney? Ben won the movie vote tonight then. He’s about to tell Eddie that he’ll stay home tonight, when he hears the front door slam. Apparently Eddie hears it too, because after a good thirty second lull in the conversation, Richie hears him mutter:

  
_“My mom’s out of town for the weekend, and I sure as fuck don’t mind missing out on Disney Fest with Stan and Bill the Lovesick Nerds. Wanna forget the movie and come over to mine?”_

  
As Richie throws on the bowling alley shirt and some jeans, dashes out of the front door and begins his run to Eddies house, he thinks to himself that maybe Stan and Bill aren’t the only Lovesick Nerds in the group.

**Author's Note:**

> Anyway if you wanna talk to me my Tumblr is @ transrichie-tozier (ayy look at that branding) and if ya'll want more of this trans richie + bev au lmk cause i love writing about these losers :p


End file.
